The Princess of Burundi

Thirteen

Mikael Andersson sat down in the visitor’s chair. Fredriksson gathered a few folders together into a pile.

“I’m glad you could stop by,” he said.

“Of course,” Mikael said.

“You may be the last person to have seen Little John alive,” Fredriksson began.

“Except the killer.”

“Except the killer, yes. Had you known him long?”

“My whole life. We grew up in the same neighborhood, went to school together, and hung out after that.”

“Why did you continue to associate with him?”

“He was my friend,” Mikael said and looked at Fredriksson.

“Did you get along well?”

Mikael nodded. Fredriksson thought that the man in front of him in no way corresponded to the image he had formed of him when they talked on the phone. Mikael Andersson was short, only around 165 centimeters Fredriksson guessed, and solidly built, fat actually. Fredriksson knew he installed metal roofing but had trouble imagining him moving around on a rooftop.

“What did you do together?”

“We’d get together, bet on horses, play a little bandy sometimes.”

“Sirius isn’t up to much these days,” Fredriksson said.

“Right. What else do you want to know?”

“You must know Berit and Lennart.”

“Sure.”

“So, tell me about them.”

“Lennart is a whole chapter, but you must know all about him. Berit’s a brick. They’ve always been together.”

Micke leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and interlaced his fingers before he continued. Fredriksson noted the changes in his face as a wave of red washed over the pugdy cheeks and throat.

“She’s all right,” he said. “It won’t be easy for her now that John’s gone. And the kid too. I don’t get it. He seemed the same as always. Have you got any leads?”

“Nothing too promising,” Fredriksson admitted.

“I think he was picked up by someone who later killed him. I just don’t know who that would be.”

“Someone offered him a ride?”

“But who would that be?”

“You can’t think of anyone who had an ax to grind with John?”

“No, nothing that would have made them want to kill him. John knew how to toe the line.”

“How was he doing financially?”

“He wasn’t rolling in money, but they managed. Things got worse after he stopped working for Sagge.”

“Why did he stop?”

“There wasn’t enough work, they said.”

“Who’s ‘they’?”

“Sagge and his wife. She’s the one who calls the shots.”

Fredriksson pinched his nose.

“Someone picked him up, you said. Did John have any business out in Libro? Was there some company out there he needed to visit, or a friend?”

“Not that I know of. He didn’t have too many friends.”

“Did you ever see John with drugs?”

Mikael Andersson shot a quick glance at Fredriksson. He inhaled deeply and breathed out through his nose. Fredriksson had the impression that Micke was trying to decide whether or not to tell the truth.

“A long time ago, maybe. But that was all over and done with.”

“How long ago are we talking about?”

Micke made a gesture as if to say: God only knows, it must have been years ago.

“When we were young,” he said finally. “Twenty years ago.”

“He never mentioned drugs after that?”

“Talk is one thing, but I never saw John with any drugs the past few years.”

Fredriksson leaned back, put his hands behind his head, and looked at him. The police officer’s face revealed nothing. He sat there for half a minute, then slowly put his hands back down, leaned back over the desk, and wrote a few lines in his notebook.

“Tell me about John,” he said. “What kind of person was he?”

“He was quiet, just like his dad. His dad stuttered badly, but not John. He was a good friend. He didn’t have a lot of friends at school. It was just me and a couple of other guys. He’d always been interested in fish. I don’t know where that came from. Maybe it was his uncle, Eugene, who started the whole thing. We used to go fishing with him. He had a cabin out towards Faringe.”

Mikael paused. Fredriksson sensed that he was trying to go back ten, twenty years in time.

“He was happy there, in the dinghy,” he continued. “It was a little lake. A cold bastard of a lake, with the forest growing right down to the shoreline.”

“What did you catch?”

“Perch and pike, mostly. John sometimes talked about going back there again, but we never did, like with so many things. When we sat in the boat it was like being kids again. We could row from shore to shore without effort. The only break in the forest was the clearing where Eugene’s house was. It was a converted shed with a storage locker made out of sugar crates fastened together. The lake was like a sealed room. John oftened talked about those trips. In late winter Eugene would take us wood-grousing. We walked in the darkness over the swaying ice until we came to a felling area where he had made a shelter out of twigs and branches. We curled up in there. John always liked little places like that. The small lake and the tiny shelter.”

“He also worked for a small company,” Fredriksson added.

Mikael nodded.

“He wasn’t really a troublemaker, not even when he was younger. As long as we stuck to Ymer and Frodegatan, everything was fine. When we were little you could get almost anything in Almtuna, our suburb. There were five grocery stores within ten minutes’ walk. Now there isn’t even a place called Almtuna. Have you seen that sign, over by the Vaksala school?”

Fredriksson shook his head.

“It says ‘Fålhagen.’ All the old names are disappearing. I don’t know who makes those decisions, that no place should retain the old names. Eriksdal and Erikslund are also gone. Even Stabby is called ‘Outer Luthagen.’”

“I’ve moved here recently,” said Fredriksson, who was not familiar with all the old areas and districts of Uppsala.

“I think they do it to confuse us.”

“‘Luthagen’ probably sounds better than ‘Stabby’ in the real estate ads.”

“Maybe,” Mikael said, “it’s about the money, then. I think about the old days more now. Must be age.”

“And what do you see?” said Fredriksson, who found he was enjoying the discussion.

“The yards. Kids. There were a lot of us. John and Lennart and others.” Mikael stopped and his face took on a sad and starved expression.

“It was a long time ago, but it feels so close,” he said. “When did it all go to hell?”

“For John and Lennart, you mean?”

“Not only them. You know their old man worked on the railroad. His dad too. He helped build Port Arthur, which was supposed to be employee housing for rail folk. But we lived up on Frodegatan. I felt a real connection with them back then-not anymore. That’s what gets me. I take a walk through the old neighborhoods sometimes. For John and Lennart I think it all started back when Lennart was twelve and me and John were nine. We had been playing bandy in Fålhagen. There was a big field out there that was hosed down every winter. Lennart had swiped a wallet in the dressing room from a guy named Håkan. I sometimes ran into him downtown. Lennart took out the wallet as we were teetering home on our skates. Nineteen kronor. We were scared shitless, but Lennart just laughed.”

“It was the needle that became a bowl of silver,” Fredriksson injected, referring to the old folk tale.

Mikael nodded and continued. Fredriksson leaned over and checked to make sure the miniature tape recorder on his desk was still going.

“Nineteen kronor. I didn’t want any of it, I was too scared, so Lennart and John divvied it up between them. Lennart was always fair with his brother. That was the problem for John-having a big brother who always shared. Did it start then? I don’t know.”

“Lennart and John were close?”

Mikael nodded.

“Did Lennart drag John into something?”

“It sounds plausible, of course, but I don’t think so. Lennart always protected his brother.”

“Maybe he involved him in something without being aware of it.”

Mikael looked doubtful.

“What could it have been, though? Lennart was a small-time guy.”

“Maybe he was on to something big this time,” Fredriksson said. “But okay, let’s leave it. I also wanted to ask you what you thought of John and Berit’s relationship. Were they happy together?”

Mikael snorted.

“Happiness?” he said. “That’s quite a word, but all right, I guess it applies to them.”

“No hanky-panky on the side?”

“Not in John’s case, I wouldn’t think. You know, they met when they were sixteen. I was actually there the first time they met; it was at a pool hall in Sivia. We hung out there almost all the time. One day Berit came by with a girlfriend. She fell for him immediately. He wasn’t like the rest of us, loud and all that. John was quiet, thoughtful. He could throw anyone off their stride, he was so quiet.”

“So you’re saying John and Berit have been faithful to each other for over twenty years.”

“When you put it like that it sounds crazy, but that’s how I saw it. I never heard him talk about other broads, and we talked about most things.”

There was a careful knock at the door and it opened. Riis looked in.

“I have a note for you, Allan,” he said, while looking the visitor up and down.

Fredriksson leaned over the desk and took the folded note, opened it, and read the short message from his colleague.

“I see,” he said and looked at Mikael. “You said that John and Berit hadn’t been in such good shape financially.”

“The last little while, yes.”

“Was that why you deposited ten thousand kronor into his account on the third of October?”

Mikael flushed a deep red again. He cleared his throat and Fredriksson again glimpsed an expression of fear in his eyes. Perhaps not fear exactly, more like anxiety. He knew it didn’t mean anything. Most people, especially those sitting in front of a desk at the police station, reacted that way on the subject of money. They could talk calmly about any number of unpleasant things, but invariably they grew nervous at the mention of money.

“No, not really. Things weren’t so good for me back in September. John stepped in with the ten thousand and I was paying him back.”

“Tell me what happened.”

“Like I said, I was short on cash and John offered to help out.”

“‘Help out.’ Ten thousand is pretty good for a man who’s unemployed.”

“I know, but he said it was no problem.”

“May I ask why you were short on cash? Were you in the habit of borrowing money from John?”

“It’s happened before, but not very often.”

“Why, then?”

“I’d been gambling. Roulette. That’s all.”

“And lost?”

“That’s how it goes, isn’t it?”

“Where was this?”

“A place called Baren Baren, if you know where that is.”

Fredriksson nodded.

“But then you got some money?”

“I was paid my salary. That was enough to take care of the loan. And then I lived cheap for the rest of October.”

“It was not the case, then, that you had borrowed more and the ten thousand was a first installment?”

“No, it wasn’t anything like that,” Mikael assured him.

“Did John say anything about how he was able to produce so much money without blinking an eye?”

“No.”

“It was not the case that you were supposed to perform a service for the money, but that you changed your mind and returned the cash?”

“No. What would that have been?”

“I don’t know,” Fredriksson said and carefully refolded the note. “When were you at Baren Baren?”

“I was there a lot.”

“John too?”

“Sometimes.”

“Did he gamble?”

“Yes, but never large amounts.”

“You wouldn’t call him a gambler?”

“No, not really. He was pretty careful.”

Fredriksson was silent for a moment.

“I know how it sounds, but I swear I’m telling you the truth.”

“It’s pretty normal for a friend to help out a friend,” Fredriksson said quietly, “but as you can understand, the picture changes when one of the two is murdered.”

With that, he ended the session.

Mikael tried to look relaxed but the air of openness at the beginning of the conversation had dissipated. He followed Fredriksson out without saying a word, and when they reached the last door, which the police officer held open for him, Mikael again assured him that it had all happened exactly as he’d said.

Fredriksson believed him, or rather, wanted to.